


I Might Just Tear You Apart.

by Josaporta



Series: My Love Outweighs My Lust For You[r Blood] [1]
Category: Bandom, Twenty One Pilots
Genre: Alternate Universe - Creatures & Monsters, Alternate Universe - Dark, Blood and Gore, Multi, Not Technically Cannibalism, Unresolved Emotional Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-19
Updated: 2014-10-19
Packaged: 2018-02-21 18:23:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2478026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Josaporta/pseuds/Josaporta
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tyler is 'something else'. It's not always easy, and it's not something he's very good at, but he can deal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Might Just Tear You Apart.

His mother told him, once, that they didn’t have a name for what they were. She did not have any other children to tell, so it was just him and her. His father wasn’t like them. He was something soft and fragile and so very human.

They were something Other.

They did not have a name for what they were, but they were something ancient. Her father had told her and his mother had told him. That was how it went, the passage of this thing that they were. Father to daughter, mother to son. There were no gaps in generation, only in sex. There was never a repeat, because that would mean the cycle would end, and they would be no more.

They were something old and terrible, faking human skin and bone but with gnashing teeth and hungry stomachs.

The hunger hit him when he was very young, his mother said. She told him about how hers hadn’t started until she’d hit the equivalent of puberty, mimicking the human symptoms of it, but not entirely. The hunger was dangerous, though, and it wasn’t meant to start so soon. He was barely older than ten when he first noticed it.

He wasn’t hungry around the food other children ate when he was around them. It was mostly in church, but he would watch on as they ate, stuffing their faces with whatever was in their bags and smiling around mouthfuls of food.

It made him a little sick.

His stomach didn’t growl until much later, when they were running around playing. At first, he’d thought he was hearing things, but then he started listening. The sound that made his stomach growl was wet and pounding, a quick thud-thump, and it took him a long time to realize what it was. The beating of the other children’s hearts had set his empty stomach rolling with something ravenous.

He’d run to his mother, frantic and concerned, and she had taken him away to explain. She pet his hair back from his face, whispering soft things about how it was okay, it was normal, but just for them. His siblings weren’t like them, they were soft and fragile and to be protected, just like his father.

She had taught him about it, about what they were. Dark and descended from something Not Human enough to the point that they weren’t, but they were. They could act like them, eat like them, walk and talk and operate like them, but they weren’t. They were the things that stories had been told about in the dark nights when everything was quiet and dangerous. It had been when predators had stalked Man in the beginning, and they were from there.

They were campfire stories and urban legends of ‘cannibals’ and things in the hills that crept through trees with smiling, helpful faces. They were sharp teeth and strong jaws. They were hard, unbreakable bone and weathered skin so tough that it grew too resilient for harm. They grew strong in the dark and they grew heavy in the day.

They were danger and death hiding under facades of smiles and welcoming.

Tyler, though. Tyler was something of an outlier.

He didn’t feel the need to protect his family like his mother did. He didn’t feel the need to claw and bite and snarl at anyone who came near them like his mother did. She’d told him once that she was too overprotective of them because of that. That was why she’d homeschooled them. She didn’t trust humans with her babies. Her family. Hers.

Tyler didn’t feel that.

His family was his, yes, but it wasn't His like it was Hers. He wasn’t like her in that regard, and she didn’t understand why. Just like he didn’t understand the concept when she tried to explain to him how her family was Hers and no one would ever touch it.

It made him feel isolated.

It made him sad.

Sadness was something she said was more human than she was, and he had to learn to deal with it by himself. So he wrote songs.

Tyler wrote songs and the songs resonated with these small humans with fragile skin and fluttery hearts and without the teeth that he had to tear them open with. It made him feel good to know that he could protect all of these little humans, that he could have something that was His like his mom felt her family was Hers.

But then, there was Josh.

There was Josh and Tyler finally, suddenly understood what she meant.

Josh’s heartbeat matched the easy rhythm in his steps and the smile on his face was bright and when Tyler heard his heart for the first time he didn’t feel hungry, he felt elated. He wanted to reach into Josh’s chest and cradle his heart in his hands, but he didn’t want to bite into it. It wasn’t like other hearts where he wanted to swallow it down like it was a treat and he was starving.

Josh’s heart was something sweet that he wanted to preserve. He wanted to feel it beat in his fingers, but he didn’t. He just wanted to make sure it was beating, and so he took to getting his attention by grabbing his sleeve. It was an easy way to feel the beat of it against his fingertips and maybe it wasn’t how he wanted, but it was still incredible every time. He could feel the thrum of his pulse and he could focus on it and then they were always together.

The music Tyler was making was suddenly the music they were making. Josh’s drums were the balance to his lyrics, something brighter than his words were and something that made it perfect.

Tyler wanted to steal him away and tell him everything, and tell him what he was, or what he wasn’t, and that Josh was His. He wanted to explain what it meant and what he felt and how deeply he felt it, but he wanted Josh to stay, too. He didn’t want to scare him away like his mom had said had almost happened with his dad. He didn’t want that-- he was terrified.

So he didn’t.

He didn’t tell Josh how he felt, how he ached and writhed when someone else would touch him too much, too long. He didn’t want to be too possessive in human terms, but he wasn’t human. He was something else and it made him twitch and cringe when someone would look at Josh like they wanted him. His insides would scream at him to tear them to pieces, don’t touch, he was Tyler’s-- his, His, His. But he couldn’t. Because Josh didn’t know.

Josh didn’t know when they were starting to get bigger. Josh didn’t know when they talked to people in the industry who could make them able to spread themselves out even more.

Josh didn’t know when he met Debby.

Tyler wanted to tear her to shreds more than anyone else ever before.

Tyler had never dealt with the hunger well, and his mother knew that. So when he called her, alone and far away from prying ears, and told her about how every time he saw them together his stomach tumbled over itself like he wanted to retch. He wanted to dig his fingers into her face and open it up. He wanted to watch her bones crumble apart in his hands and he wanted to eat her heart while it was still beating.

But he couldn’t.

He couldn’t be she was Josh’s and Josh loved her.

So he dealt with it. He slept less, and he ignored her. He was friends with Jenna and they could pretend at playing human together. She wasn’t what he was, but she was something soft and sweet. It was easy for her to tone him down when he felt particularly murderous. She wasn’t His, but they were close. They could be easy and sweet together, and if it seemed to humans like they were something more then that was that. They weren’t, but they could play like they were. It was easier than telling Josh, and Tyler could deal with it. Even if he still wanted to eat Debby’s heart and steal Josh’s back from her.

He spent the long, long time they were together pretending like he wasn’t about to claw into someone the moment they became more official.

Them breaking up was unexpected, but Tyler couldn’t say that he was unhappy about it. He was, in a sense, that he wished it didn’t affect Josh as much as it did, but he was glad she was gone. The urge inside of him dulled, and he could be more human again.

He could be soft and gentle again. He didn’t always have to be a monster like he’d taken to thinking of himself as. It had been something that had happened gradually, but it was a realization nonetheless. He wasn’t like his mother, where he was something so completely Other that she was mostly unaffected by human things, but he wasn’t like a human either. He was stuck in some limbo space where he wasn’t anything but himself and he wasn’t even sure that he liked himself that much.

He tried to stop thinking about it.

He had taken Josh aside after that, told him what he was, and Josh had looked at him for a long time like he was crazy. Tyler had needed to get it out, because not doing so would have just been worse. He didn’t tell Josh how he was Tyler’s, but he didn’t need to.

It took a very long time, a call to his mother, and a call to Jenna before Josh realized that he hadn’t finally gone insane.

After that he had been strangely accepting, but it was nice. He had questions-- did Tyler really like eating people food? Yes. Did Tyler ever eat someone’s heart? No. Did Tyler ever eat any part of a person? Yes. Josh had gotten pale at that, but Tyler had quickly explained that it wasn’t like that. Sometimes people knew, and sometimes people died. It was just how it worked. How he worked.

“I’m a monster.” He’d said, out loud, for the first time. He wasn’t surprised that Josh was the first person he’d said it to. He hadn’t to Jenna or his mom, because they would have told him no he wasn’t, but he was.

“I don’t think you’re a monster.” Had been Josh’s immediate reply, but he looked like he wanted to take it back as soon as he’d said it.

“Yes, you do.” He’d shrugged and shifted his gaze away, because knowing that Josh thought he was hurt. It hurt something deep inside of him that squashed any hunger away and clawed at his insides with icy cold fingers. It scraped at the feelings and made them raw.

“I don’t.” Josh’s voice was softer, and Tyler was sure he’d let slip how he was feeling, let it dart across his face before he reeled it back into his carefully constructed person mask.

“It’s okay if you do. I know I am. I’m not like my mom. I’m not like Jenna. I’m not like you. I’m something else.”

“Yeah, but you’re still Tyler.” He only snapped to attention when Josh touched his hand, and Tyler watched carefully as he played with his fingers, flipping his palm over. Josh’s voice was tentative, like he wasn’t quite sure. So he nodded. Yes, he was still himself. Everything about him was still true. He hadn’t changed just because he’d finally admitted aloud that he was a monster. He just felt empty now.

It was a strange feeling, but not a foreign one. He’d felt it before Josh. He just hadn’t expected to feel it again.

He dismissed himself before Josh could ask any more questions. He didn’t know if he had the heart to tell him anything else because he was sure Josh would ask how his mom and dad worked, and Tyler knew he’d slip up and talk about His. And Josh couldn’t know. Especially not now that he knew he was a monster.

They didn’t talk about it after that.

He wasn’t sure he wanted to anymore.

He wasn’t sure he really wanted to do much of anything anymore.

There was a lull in the touring where they weren’t doing anything. They were home in Ohio and Tyler hid from everyone in his mother’s house. She babied him like she always had, and his siblings looked at him sadly. They knew. They always knew everything that went on with him, because his family was his mother’s, and she told them all about it. He was a little bitter about that.

He couldn’t do anything much more than that. He took to writing new things down again. New songs for new things and new people and new faces and tours. And Josh could put new, sunny drumbeats over them and they could work together again.

They could, he knew they could. It would just take some adjusting.

Tyler let things drift after that. They went back to shows, they went back to ‘normal’.

Josh never brought it up, so Tyler didn’t either.

All he needed was this, anyway. He could forget everything else.

He could play at human, playing for humans, while a human pulled his heartstrings.

**Author's Note:**

> Hey sorry I haven't been responding to comments on the college au I've been hella swamped but here have this super self indulgent au fic where Tyler is a monster but a good one.
> 
> I'm really into gore but I tried to tone it down some. And the boys don't really get a resolution but maybe I'll come back to it someday and they will. I was mostly just trying to keep it short before I got carried away with it.


End file.
